A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. The following notice applies to the software and its interfaces as described below and in the drawing hereto: Copyright (copyright) 1998, ADC NewNet, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The present invention relates generally to mobile telephone systems, and more particularly to method and apparatus for over-the-air service provisioning of a mobile telephone.
Prior to its activation and use in a wireless network, a mobile telephone must be provisioned for service. Provisioning includes, at a minimum, programming the mobile telephone with a telephone number, and programming the wireless network with the serial number and telephone number of the mobile telephone. Thus programmed, the mobile telephone and wireless network are enabled to carry telephone calls between the mobile telephone and the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Provisioning may alsD include programming the wireless network and mobile telephone to support one or more optional features for the mobile telephone, such as call forwarding, three-way calling, voice messaging, short messaging and paging.
To date, provisioning/programming of a mobile telephone has largely been done on the premises of the vendor or distributor of the telephone. A data port on the mobile telephone is used to connect the telephone to a programming system that uploads provisioning data into the telephone, such as the telephone number assigned to the telephone, in order to program it for use in the wireless network. Alternatively, the telephone is programed through its key pad. This approach, while sound and secure, requires the undesirable step of programming/provisioning the mobile telephone before it can be delivered to a subscriber. The ability to deliver a mobile telephone directly to a subscriber without first having to provision the telephone provides obvious advantage in the speed of delivery to the subscriber, and the potential to simplify the provisioning process. Also, the ability to re-provision a mobile telephone over-the-air without returning the phone to a service center also has obvious advantages.
An alternative over-the-air (OTA) service provisioning (OTASP) approach has thus been defined by a standard body so that a mobile telephone can be provisioned over-the-air using the wireless network. The requirements of this standard are defined in IS-683 (also known as PN-3889), published by the Telecommunications Industry Association (T.I.A.), the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. In its most basic form, this approach provides that a mobile telephone is temporarily provisioned to allow a subscriber using the telephone to call a customer service center, through which long-term provisioning can be obtained. The service center establishes a provisioning communication link with the mobile telephone through the SS7 network and the mobile switching center (MSC) supporting the call. Using this communication link, the mobile telephone can be provisioned over-the-air by wireless short message commands sent to the telephone, and using provisioning information sent by the mobile telephone back to the service center over the communication link.
While the IS-683 standard specifies the basic messaging to be supported by the mobile telephone and the wireless network to facilitate OTA provisioning, it does not specify a system-level architecture for the software and systems required to support and implement the messaging. The present invention addresses these architectural needs.
The present invention provides a method, system and software architecture facilitating over-the-air (OTA) service provisioning (OTASP) of a mobile telephone, from a customer service center, through a mobile switching center (MSC) over the SS7 network. According to one embodiment of the invention, object-oriented OTASP software executes on a UNIX platform and communicates, on the one hand, in a TCP/IP protocol with client software located at a remote customer service center, and, on the other hand, using the SS7 network, with the MSC. By this architecture, the client software may send and receive messages and provisioning data to a mobile telephone supported by the MSC, through the OTASP software and the SS7 network.
According to another embodiment of the invention, multiple instances of the OTASP software may be instantiated on the UNIX platform, wherein each instance supports a different mobile telephone standard, such as CDMA and TDMA. Furthermore, each instance of the OTASP software may initiate multiple simultaneous sessions each supporting the provisioning of a different mobile telephone. In addition, the client-server architecture allows a plurality of clients to communicate with the OTASP software simultaneously, and allows such clients to be located in locations remote from one another.